How to Access Documents Anywhere with Your iPad

Working remotely is only practical if you can stay in touch with family, friends, and colleagues, sharing files and ideas in real time. That means having some way of efficiently sharing documents--one that’s as simple from an iPad at home as it is from your Mac or PC back at the office. Here, you’re spoiled for choice.

The Dropbox client for iPad and iPhone can open a wide range of documents natively, but only in read-only mode.

Dropbox handles file synchronization between your iPad, iPhone, Mac, and PC--including Linux systems. To get you started it’ll even throw in 2GB of online storage for free, which you can upgrade to 50GB or 100GB for $9.99 or $19.99 a month, respectively. Once you’ve selected the folders on your Mac or PC you want it to keep an eye on, it’ll copy their contents to its own server whenever it spots a change, and send those revisions to each device.

The Dropbox client is an impressive file viewer that takes Excel, Pages, PDF, Word, XML, and a host of other common and more esoteric formats in its stride. You can share stored files by emailing links to your contacts, and if you want to work on them locally there’s an “Open in” menu that tracks compatible applications for each file type installed on your iPad and sends your chosen document straight to them.

Several tools use Dropbox natively. Stripped-back word processor PlainText is just one of many office tools that saves your work directly to your Dropbox account, so any documents you create out of the office will be waiting on your computer when you get back to your desk. It’s productivity and passive backup all rolled into one, so should the worst happen and your iPad is lost or stolen, your data will still be safe. Quickoffice Pro HD [iTunes link] and Office2 HD [iTunes link] can also read from and write to your Dropbox account.

Dropbox is far from the only choice. SugarSync also synchronizes folders, and for those who would rather not rely on Photo Stream to synchronize their images, its dedicated photo tools make it easy to get images onto and off of your iPad. If you need a quick-and-easy means of transferring assets for use in a Keynote presentation, this is much simpler than first dragging them into iPhoto or Aperture or sending them by email.

Box for iPhone and iPad offers not only file synchronization but also direct integration with Google Docs, version control so you can retrieve older versions of current files, and extensive text search options, depending on the level of service you signed up for. Its opening offering is more generous than Dropbox, with 5GB of free space for all users, but keep in mind that if you’re signed up to the free account no single file can be larger than 25MB. Dropbox, in comparison, will accept files of any size when dispatched through its desktop application, and 300MB when uploaded through its website.

The Box app not only lets you access and manage your stored documents, it's also a versatile file viewer.

Apple’s own iCloud service integrates smoothly with Quickoffice, Office2 HD, and iA Writer, but the best experience is with Numbers, Keynote, and Pages, which use it to synchronize your documents between all of the iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches logged in under the same Apple ID. You’ll see it working, as edited files are momentarily overlaid by an arrow in one corner while it performs the upload; if yours aren’t, make sure that iCloud is switched on in each app in iPad Settings.

However, iCloud isn’t perfect for working cross-platform as its support under both OS X and Windows is sketchy, currently relying on you downloading your documents through the browser in PDF, Microsoft, or native formats.

For Mac users this will change with the introduction later this year of Mountain Lion, the next iteration of the operating system, which will incorporate a feature called Documents in the Cloud.